Russian woman paved the way for Sally Ride, other women to fly in space

By

Daniel Uria

Nikita Khrushchev (R), and cosmonauts Valentina Tereshkova (2nd-R), Pavel Popovich (C) and Yuri Gagarin gather at the Lenin Mausoleum on June 22, 1963, during a demonstration dedicated to the successful space flights of the Vostok-5 and Vostok-6 spacecraft. File Photo courtesy of RIA Novosti/Wikimedia

Astronaut Sally K. Ride performs a number of functions simultaneously to prove the necessity for versatility and dexterity in space travel, aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983. The flight was the first to carry an American woman into space. Photo courtesy NASA

The remotely controlled Sally Ride EarthKAM aboard the International Space Station acquired this photograph on July 14, 2016, as the orbiting laboratory flew over Lake Powell and the border of Utah and Arizona. Photo courtesy NASA | License Photo

On June 18, 1983, Sally Ride became the first American woman to fly in space when the space shuttle Challenger launched on mission STS-7 from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. This high-angle view of the shuttle liftoff, showing a lengthy stretch of Florida Atlantic coastline and a number of large cumulus clouds, was photographed by astronaut John W. Young. Photo by John W. Young/NASA/UPI | License Photo

Former NASA Astronaut Sally Ride (center left) and Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Northrop Grumman Corporation, Ronald Sugar, (center right) pose with 18 of the top Science and Math Teachers at the West Coast Summit for the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation at the San Diego Air and Space Museum in San Diego, California, on August 11, 2006. File Photo by Joseph Marino/UPI | License Photo

Former NASA Astronaut Sally Ride responds to questions while attending the West Coast Summit for the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation at the San Diego Air and Space Museum in San Diego, California, on August 11, 2006. File Photo by Joseph Marino/UPI | License Photo

Tam O'Shaughnessy accepts a Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama on behalf of her late partner, former NASA Astronaut Sally Ride, at the White House on November 20, 2013. Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

July 23 (UPI) -- Most Americans already know NASA astronaut Sally Ride, but if you asked what she's known for they might answer she was the first woman in space. They would be wrong.

The United States dominated space endeavors for decades beginning in the mid 1960s, but there are three notable accolades Russia can claim that NASA can't -- the first satellite, the first human and the first woman in space.

Ride gained worldwide attention when she flew into space on June 18, 1983, becoming the first American woman in space. What some might not know, though, is she was actually the world's third woman to do it.

Although the United States famously beat Russia to the moon, Moscow got the better of NASA at the start of the space race. In 1957, Moscow put Sputnik, the first artificial satellite, into orbit. Four years later, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space.

The first woman to break free of the Earth's atmosphere followed in 1963 -- almost 20 years to the day before Ride took her historic ride. She was cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, and she made her flight on June 16, 1963, on the now-famous Vostok-6 spacecraft.

Although she was celebrated to a degree inside the Soviet Union, Tereshkova also found herself the subject of some negative press -- owing largely to the vastly different political climate of the era. Her achievement came during a period of readjustment for the role of women in the Soviet Union in the decades after World War II.

"After the war, in order to return to a normal social footing, women who had taken on traditionally male roles in civilian society were encouraged or forced to move out of those positions and into more traditional female working roles," Cathleen Lewis, curator of of International Space Programs and Spacesuits at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum, told UPI. "Women in post-World War II Russia suffered from this triple burden of being forced out of prestigious jobs, encouraged to continue to work and also bear and raise children."

Tereshkova and three other women were chosen to train at the Soviet Space Center at Star City, where they were subjected to the same centrifuge rides and zero-G flights as their male counterparts. They were also also commissioned as junior lieutenants in the Soviet Air Force and given fight instruction.

By the time she and Tatyana Torchillova were chosen to train for the Vostok-6 flight, the one that put her into space, Tereshkova had already become a symbol of the ideal Soviet woman.

She was born in the village of Masslenikovo, where her parents worked on a collective farm until her father was killed in World War II. She worked in a textile mill at 18 and later joined a club for parachutists, making over 150 jumps.

"Here is your hero of the Soviet Union, she was working for love of her country and rebuilding the country, going to space for love of her country and then of course months later she marries the only single male cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev and immediately has a baby," Lewis said. "So she hits the hat trick for Soviet women at the time."

Lewis added the Soviet government took steps to prevent details of mishaps on Tereshkova's flight from becoming public, which led to rumors and speculation over the years that diminished the overall impact of her historic flight.

"There were many things that went not according to plan in the mission and those things were covered up," she said. "There was nothing catastrophic, nothing precisely for which she could be blamed, but enough that it just didn't leave the same sentiment of heroic accomplishment of male cosmonauts."

Gagarin, for example, enjoyed greater celebrity than did Tereshkova -- largely because her accomplishment occurred in a far different gender climate. Tereshkova's flight was meant to demonstrate the simplicity and the promise of new space technology, adding government pressure to succeed. In some circles, though, she wasn't taken seriously.

Tereshkova was subjected to sexist media coverage in the Soviet Union and abroad. After she completed her historic flight, one UPI report joked about Tereshkova having an affair with fellow cosmonaut Valery F. Bykovsky during their joint mission, while one U.S. space official spoke of "an allowance of 125 pounds for recreation equipment" on the Apollo moon missions, when asked about the possibility of a female astronaut in the United States.

After Tereshkova's flight it would be another 20 years before Russia sent another woman, Svetlana Savitskaya, into space.

The rise of women at NASA

Ride found her path to NASA through a deliberate effort at the agency to be more inclusive and hire astronauts from different fields.

When assembling its flight team for Project Mercury, the first human space flight program in the United States, NASA chose astronauts almost exclusively from test pilot school, a practice that continued until the end of the Apollo program.

In addition to announcing a desire to hire women and minorities in 1976, NASA also sought to recruit more people with backgrounds outside of flight training, NASA historian Jennifer Ross-Nazzal told UPI.

"There had been scientist astronauts selected before, but there was a real emphasis on using the space shuttle orbiter as a lab in space," Ross-Nazzal said. "There were a number of folks selected as mission specialists, they didn't have to have flight time and a lot of them had graduate degrees in science or engineering."

In all, six women -- Ride, Anna Fisher, Shannon Lucid, Judith Resnik, Rhea Seddon and Kathryn Sullivan -- were selected as part of NASA's class of 1978, along with four of the first African-American and Asian-American astronauts.

When she was chosen to become the first American woman in space aboard STS-7 in 1983, Ride faced many of the same challenges and pressures Tereshkova did.

Even in the years after, Ride still faced reporters who wanted to know if she would cry if something went wrong in the space flight simulator. Some even joked that a delay of her historic 1983 flight was the result of Ride searching for a handbag to match her shoes -- echoes of the days of Tereshkova.

"There's really these awkward moments where here's Sally Ride, who is sort of the epitome of what feminism is, that women can do it all, women can be astronauts, but yet the media continues to rely on these stereotypes that women and technology don't mix, women and science don't mix," Ross-Nazzal said.

The media coverage was compounded with pressure, for both Ride and Tereshkova, to prove they were capable of completing a space flight.

"She, of course, felt a great deal of pressure to not mess things up being the first, because she knew that if something were to happen that might have a dramatic impact on her colleagues who are part of her class," Ross-Nazzal said of Ride.

"The fact that I was going to be the first American woman to go into space carried huge expectations along with it," Ride said. "That was made pretty clear the day that I was told I was selected as a crew.

"I was taken up to [former NASA flight control manager] Chris Kraft's office. He wanted to have a chat with me and make sure I knew what I was getting into before I went on the crew. I was so dazzled to be on the crew and go into space I remembered very little of what he said."

Ultimately the flight was successful, and Ride continued to work with NASA until 1989. She made a return trip to space in 1984 on shuttle mission STS-41G -- this time with fellow female astronaut Sullivan.

The pioneers' legacy

Ride is often considered the pioneer American female astronaut, but at least 50 women have flown a great many missions with NASA. She's also often thought of in the same breath -- and is sometimes confused with -- Christa McAuliffe, a school teacher chosen to fly on the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1986.

McAuliffe, 37, would have been the fifth woman in space -- if Challenger hadn't exploded just 73 seconds after leaving the launch pad. Resnik, just the fourth woman in space, also died in the Challenger disaster -- as did astronaut Ronald McNair, the second African American in space. Both also came from NASA's class of 1978.

"All of the women who were selected in 1978 and 1980 flew before the Challenger accident and they all went on to do amazing things for the space agency, they all had amazing flights and experiences," said Ross-Nazzal.

It's likely the accomplishments of Tereshkova and Ride motivated women to follow them into space -- like Ellen Ochoa, the first Hispanic woman in space, and Peggy Whitson, who holds the U.S. record for most days in space (665).

"There are a number of outstanding women the public might know today, but don't realize they were influenced by, not only Sally Ride, but her other 5 colleagues that were selected in 1978," Ross-Nazzal said. "They were sort of the vanguard for women coming into the astronaut office."

Ride was also instrumental in developing the space shuttle's robotic arm, which was instrumental on later missions to launch and retrieve satellites and make the famous repair of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993.

After her NASA career ended, Ride joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, and founded Sally Ride Science in 2001 with partner Tam O'Shaughnessy, Karen Flammer, Terry McEntee and Alann Lopes.

Ride has received a number of honors over the years. An Earth camera aboard the International Space Station is named for her and she is a space hall of famer. She died exactly six years ago Monday at the age of 61, of pancreatic cancer. In 2013, she was posthumously awarded a Presidential Medal of Honor.

Tereshkova's legacy looms just as large. She's won most of the civilian awards possible and parlayed her historic achievement into other high-profile moves. She became an honorary member of the Soviet Air Force and a prominent member of Russia's Communist Party.

In 2013, she offered to go on a one-way trip to Mars if the opportunity came.